Rage Rant (all I have time for before my haircut)

Sometimes I rage for no reason at all (or at least for no reason I can immediately discern). Right now is one of those times. The minuscule shortfalls of life feel like personal vindictive misfortunes laid out by a vengeful god. It's a good thing I don't believe in god because my anger would make me a very poor believer.

Acceptance of anything feels just out of my reach and all my joints are swollen with anxious fluids. My ankles feel just about ready to pop. And fuck, today was a good day at work. This collapse into seething is sudden and vicious and I am beginning to feel guilty about even feelings this way. I hate myself for letting it get this far. Blaming this body and its shortcomings has always been the easiest course of action to manage. I hate my hands for being dry and my fingertips for bleeding.

I've started to envy the people on tv who always have a reason when some awful feeling crawls inside their body. I wish there was always an answer beneath every outburst I feel might come spilling out of me. I just feel angry. There is no reason to it at all.

I can never observe myself with an anger like this. I can only be with that anger. There is not room for noticing what kind of person I am. And as much as I have fantasized about releasing the pain of self-consciousness I am scared of what not noticing myself might cause.

Even now after I have escaped the suffocation of my work environment, have scuttled away to the safety of a cafe and am sitting somewhat comfortably I still feel like my heart might be a volcano and that my dry hands could smash clean through a forty piece china set. I want to punch every motorist in the balls because one car came too close on the way over here. I want to give up entirely on the belief that good exists in anyone.

Again I blame myself for the venom. I think "I shouldn't have had so much diet soda" or "I should have drank more water" and I sometimes I just get exhausted thinking about how to attend to all the implications of the concept known as "self care".

Pitting: myself against the system

Today at work I sweat so profusely that the sodden cotton of my work shirt started chaffing against my armpits.

Usually I arrive to work sweaty (from the bike ride). With only five minutes to change before clock in, I peel off my street clothes with a relief I'll quickly smother under my "uniform". I'd like to say that putting fresh clothes onto my sweaty body is my least favorite part of the workday. But I'd be lying. There's something about being paid poorly to work that makes each slightly unpleasant task seem like it's the worst thing you do. It's a negative meditation technique I think. Keeps my body sharp and my mind off the numbing crawl of time spent on the clock.

I'm a sweaty person by nature. And I swear that I am just getting sweatier and sweatier as the years go by. But usually once I've been working for a half hour most of my bikesweat has dried. And I just sweat a bit throughout the day from doing my customer service work. That sweat accumulates throughout an 8 hr shift and by the time I clock out I'm grateful to change into my still slightly moist-pitted street clothes. Which I proceed to make even sweatier with a quick-as-I-can-make-it ride home.

This morning a customer and I went through an extremely stressful transaction before I was even able to hit the 30 minute mark (a cascade of system/equipment errors were mostly at fault) and my sweat glands got kicked into high gear. Which is where they stayed for the rest of the day. Today was an anomaly. But I pretty much sweat my way through two shirts on a workday anyhow.

Now I know I could probably avoid so thoroughly dirtying as many garments as I do on a workday by riding more slowly. But riding slower goes counter to my style. And its means spending 10 more (unpaid) minutes doing stuff related to work. And at just a scrape above minimum wage, they ain't paying me enough to smell like roses or do work off the clock. It's pretty fucking lazy, but I see my pitting as a quiet, revolting yet beautiful sort of resistance.

My Commute (a prose poem for my bike)

This is how I get to and from work every day (and also anywhere else I need to get to). I'm pretty sure I have the best commute ever.

Even after 8 hours of anxious rolling to and fro, the soles of my feet are overjoyed to be gripped and my sneakers grin at being bitten into by the pedal's teeth. For the first few blocks my palms and fingers squeeze hard to the handlebars. As if I could somehow milk relief from the yellow leather bar tape (last month's big spend). But less than a mile of my hip socket and knees churning, my spine collects enough courage to straighten up. Little by little until my hands let go and allow themselves to be dragged heavily to my sides, as roll roll roll my shoulders to the music I pinned under my helmet straps and into one ear.

Between the road cracks I dance or even flap my arms like some goofy fucking bird, or one of those pre-flight humans who knew nothing about aeronautical engineering. There is something so freeing about being on a bike. My fixie delivers to me a false and deliciously flattering sense of control. As I turn my hips and inner thighs into a steering wheel and belt out Lady Gaga, I do not fear onlookers. I welcome their gawking, because right now I am awesome-- and not in the 90's Tony Hawk sort of way. A classic sense of awe streams through my biking bones. And I become bold. Consider proposing a drag race with one of the cars. I envision winning and riding off with the stunned motorist's girlfriend bouncing on my handlebars; her heart clearly the wager of the race he was foolish enough to agree to.

I flirt with every pair of eyes I can catch. It takes serious effort to unpurse my lips from the wolf whistling position. Instead I shake my dance more vigorous. Grooving on my bike, I am sex on wheels. And in this state of churning catharsis I am freed. I am dangerous. I trickle my calculated risk through red lights and past the stilled and grumbling chagrin of jealous drivers.

I am naive enough that I do, for a few blocks, actually feel immortal, that if anything came close to hurting me and Queen Bee we'd just glide free from the damn pavement. Like I had a fucking alien hiding under a blanket in my front basket or something. Up on my revolving perch, this thing, this cycle combining with my body is stronger and surer than any drug I have ever taken. My lungs open like wings waiting for action and I am free as the air that moves through them.

Please excuse me from essay duty today,

I woke up this morning with 15 minutes to spare. I stirred to the soft twang of my phone alerting me to the fact "You work in 45 minutes". The first thing I say is "Fuck. Fuck. Fuck." I continue this little mantra through the quick brush I swizzle around my mouth. I used t too much toothpaste.

I didn't take any time to listen but I'm pretty sure that my joints and throbbing temples protested to all of this. The mantra of "fucks" get louder as I climb downstairs and realize the worst part:
My bike isn't here.

I facepalm. Harder than I mean to. Check the bus route which will leave me at least 20 minutes late. and chuck that plan. I finally cave and call a car share service.

In the 4 minutes it takes this driver to get to my apartment I scoop some leftover chili and rice into a lunch sized tupperware container and and pat myself on the back for remembering lunch. Breakfast is not happening today.

The other 2 minutes I spend staring with terrific longing at the spot under the stairs where my bike usually sleeps.

You see last night (and truth be told until 8AM this morning) I was totally and absolutely certain I has today off from work. And not just that, a friend and colleague was visiting from out of town and last night was her last night in town. Due to the revelry required by such an instance, I decided to abandon my bike for the night in favor of the kind of reckless drinking. Now this wasn't just drunken neglect it was also kinda strategic. The spot I'd chosen to leave her is also very near one of my favorite brunching spots.

Her name is Queen Bee

I went to bed last night with thoughts of their corned beef hash dancing in my head.
This morning's hitting me like the realization that there is no santa.

The car arrives and I could swear this guy must be the slowest and most insecure driver ever. The entire ride I pined for the controlled speed of my fixed gear beneath me. I used that time to make sure there isn't too much toothpaste caked in the corners of my mouth. When I finally attempt some sort of conversation he asks me about his customer rating.

I book it through the door and clock in no more than 4 minutes late. Just in time to feel the hangover hit me in full.

....


All this is to say, that I am sorry to not have something more meaty and interesting to read. Seriously though, I was gonna spend some quality time after that brunch nudging my ideas into something yummy. But tonight, after the hangover surprise of an 8 hour shift, the only thing I got left is complaints. That and inflammation.

PS: I drafted this excuse note on the bus home from work:

I've been expertly making up excuses and fooling teachers with them my entire academic career. Don't think Ive never written anything more easily than an excuse.

I've taken on the impossible (Essay a Day Challenge)

It is an absolutely true fact that I have no time at all to write this essay. Or any of the daily essays to follow that I have now pledged myself into cobbling together. For instance I am right this very moment writing this sentence from the bathroom at the yoga studio where I 'm already late for the noon reverie.

I spent the morning neck deep in all sorts of poetry (the genre I'm angling to have masters in 18 months from now) and will be at work til 11 tonight. The only time for additional scribblings are the half hour gap between yoga and work (that's if I skip the shower) and a 45 minute lunch I generally like to spend in the parking lot as the token non smoker in the smoking area.

This project is impossible. But then what is the process of creating, if not slinging ourselves at the impossible and aching for others to follow us through nonlinear implication into some semblance of mutual understanding. Which isn't really the same, but close enough that resonance can be achieved

Yes. This project is impossible. Which is part of what attracts me to it.

I am an impossible person. My body and my genders are impossible. I mean things my body will likely never be able to reflect and encapsulate and my words are always too short, to calm the constant fever of confusion that heats my life and pushes my engines forward.

....

I am skipping the shower. The smell of my motor oil be dammed. Now each sentence is coming between furtive bites of cottage cheese and leftover ratatouille: my makeshift lunch. I gobble between keyboard flicks before I fly off to my grueling sentence of customer service numbness. There I'll have to get over how under the skin my temper gets when someone asks "how are you?" without ever wanting to really know that answer. As if such a personal question could be a stand in for the beige conversational rocking horse of "hello".

The answer of course is "I am impossible." A terribly unreasonable greeting by most counts. And we must not upset the customers!

I've begun to worry about my bicycle which, for expediency's was sake, was left the porch. But now I worry her wheels are beneath someone else's pumping. And fuck.

I thought that by committing to this impossible task, I might find some fucking reprieve from the anxious thoughts that plague. I thought that if I could plan away every minute and even cover up the possibility of a fallow moment that the worrisome waves would stop smashing into me. I thought I'd reached dry land with American perseverance. But I guess there's still some saltwater in my engine.

I hate how this is turning into a prose poem. This is supposed to be an essay. An impossible piece of literature that is ragged on the edges and long in the mouth, yes, but still very much so an essay.

Secret confession: I have no idea what I am doing. And without that knowing, impossible is not really a thing I can define is it? So here is my challenge to you, oh few, and bodacious readers.

Do something impossible. Trust that your logic brain is unable to compute the parameters of what is statistically possible. Give up im/possible. With the greatest love, throw your body through artists tools and ritual, at something distant, worthwhile, and impossible

I'll see you all tomorrow!

Human = Human

Today I read this heartbreaking and fantastically honest article about poverty, disability, and value. Seriously you should read it!

Every op ed piece I read defending food stamps or other benefits bend over backwards to point out the majority of recipients are employed. The majority are good people. Good people work.
But I do not work. I am autistic, and being the autistic I am means I am real world, social model disabled. I do not work because I cannot. There are a dozen hypothetical ‘what if…’ or ‘should be…’ scenarios in which I could hold down a job, but that is not my reality.

Work and the willingness/ability to work is a shitty metric for how to value a human being. Actually scratch that, trying to ascribe value to humanity is fraught and dehumanizing.

But we do it every day in examples just like Bridget cites above. We do it every time we try to figure out if someone is a good/bad person. No one, however different or amoral they seem to be acting, can ever fail at being a person. I admit that there're people who's humanities I have trouble relating to because of my personal ethics and energy levels. But my failure to recognize their humanity doesn't mean they're not still very human.

Value and humanity have nothing to do with each other. A human is no more or less a human because of what they can or can't produce or do. When we treat people's capacity for productivity as a metric for value, we dehumanize and erase people who produce less.  Treating productive people as if they are more valuable is how we get the idea that so called geniuses are allowed to be assholes, or the notion that famous artists (like  Roman Polanski) should be absolved for their abuse & dehumanization others; as if the value of what they produce in some sick calculation, outweighs the humanity of those the abuse/dehumanize.

I've written about the falseness of work's supposed dignity-bestowing qualities. Reading Bridget's article today really hit home to me how misguided it is to think that "jobs, jobs, jobs" is the best and only answer to the problems of poverty.

Financial independence through "honest work" is too simple and inappropriate a goal for feminism or any other anti-oppression efforts. It throws people like Bridget under the bus completely and ignores unpaid forms of labor (like parenting). It also devalues community and family interdependence which have long been an invaluable survival resource for many poor people.

Jobs are not the (only) answers to the disempowerment of women (or any group). Employment fails to address the complexity of concerns faced by people who are unable or even unwilling to "work" in the traditional sense.

I'm personally at the intersection between sick and difficult to employ. I don't have the physical energy to work most jobs full time. Specifically I don't have the energy to work in most forms of education, direct action politics, social work, or customer service which are the only things I am qualified for/interested in. In addition to the problem of energy I also don't want to work full time on someone else's dream, even if it is a dream I believe in and want to collaborate on.

I have a regular commitment to and faith in my creative process as a writer. Writing is one of the few things I do consistently have energy for. I am sick today and still working on it. But it is work, albeit work not currently ascribed much value by our society.

My ability to do writing work consistently doesn't make a me a good person or even a good writer. It demonstrates my commitment and consistency (qualities prized by capitalism and the culture of productivity). And I don't deny that there is an impulse in me that encourages pride such consistency, but consciously, intellectually I know that the amount and quality of work I do has absolutely nothing to do with my worth as a person.

I'm still the same amount of human and that shit is invaluable.

Just a thought.

(xposted from my tumblr)


Talking about what constitues "real work" is as broken as talking about how "real women have curves" or how "real men don't buy girls".

It implies illegitimacy. And that the legitimacy of your definitions can only come from an outside source. You're a man if YOU say you are. You're a woman if YOU say you are. What you do is work if YOU say it is. Regardless of compensation, or whatever others may say to delegitimize your work.

the Dignity of Work

Lately I've been thinking about the phrase "the dignity of work." It has been flying around a lot lately in the media. Most often in the mouths of people talking about welfare and work programs. Newt Gingrich brought it to light quite famously back in November when he repeatedly made the ridiculous spit-ball of of a statement about "giving"  poor young (presumably black) school kids “the dignity of work” by making them part-time janitors for the school grounds. He went on later to make a special point of the fact that these kids (the presumably black ones) in urban neighborhoods "where nobody has worked and nobody has any habit of work"

More recently though, it has come from the mouth of our presumed presidential republican candidate, Mitt Romney in what could be called the "mommy" battle the media recently went on a giant frenzy about (I won’t go into it but man is THAT a can of worms in and of itself).
Romney wants mothers to have “dignity of work”. But what does that really mean? The term itself has been sloshed around so much and has been used as if it has a nearly iconic power. According to the ol reliable wiki the phrase originates in Catholic teachings.

“Employers must not ‘look upon their work people as their bondsmen, but ... respect in every man his dignity as a person ennobled by Christian character’."

Now don’t get me wrong, employers respecting their employees sound great, but notice that the initial definition is includes only men and relates only to those in an employer-employee relationships. It was originally only used to refer to and include only the transactional definition of workers and work.
After researching the actual historical context of this phrase I’ve sussed out my previously ambiguous squicky feelings about the modern use of the phrase “dignity of work”.
Its original establishment as well as the current use of the phrase "dignity of work" is rooted in an employer-employee relationship. It actually has very little to do with personal or communal sweat, progress, or projects (which I personally believe constitute work). The classic and current definition of this type of “dignity” denies and excludes any non-paid work a person might do.

Transactional (paid) work is something we do privilege in this country. We honor respect and ideologically legitimize the work a person does for pay. This assumption exists in the common introductory question"What do you do?" The implied actual question being asked is "What work are you paid to do?"

I have written previously about how our culture propagates, in many pervasive ways, the idea that folks without money don’t matter or that money is the equivalent of moral or philosophical value. The phrase "the dignity of work" is just one more divisive way that this is being done. It is especially effective because the semantics of this phrase really does resonate. I believe in the semantic meaning of the dignity of work. Working hard and investing in your own progress as well as the progress of those with whom you work is really awesome amazing and powerful. It is something I believe everyone deserves to feel.

However, when Romney says these words so iconically it or Newt says it or even when the Catholic church said it all the way back then, they sure as hell did not mean non-transactional labor. They do not mean babysitting your younger siblings because your mother can’t afford a sitter, or taking care of your grandparents/parents as their physical health deteriorates with age. They certainly don’t mean changing your own baby's diapers, or helping out with the community pea patch. These thing are not covered by the phrase “dignity of work”. What they actually is mean going out to someone else’s business and committing hours of work to an employer who has more privileged that you. They mean being paid to do alienated labor.

"The dignity of work" historically as well as currently is being used to legitimize work within pre-existing structures of capitalism. "The dignity of work” means “the dignity of participating in our current paradigm of jobs.” It means submission to a punch-clock, salaried, or hourly system of pay. "The dignity of work" actually means the submission the the current hierarchies and relationships of capitalism. “The dignity of work” as Newt and Romney talk about it is about putting your faith in capitalist systems as a mode of feeling dignity.

Anyone who has been unemployed (there’s 8.2% of us right?) or felt cheated by the system know that this is the opposite of empowering. It is, in fact, and a great display of magical semantics, asking  oppressed folks to accept their role in capitalist hierarchies. Whenever I hear someone in the media using the words “dignity” and “work” I am going to be suspicious of possible capitalist and/or Catholic idealism about transactional work. Although, I will be listening hopefully for signs of actual human dignity; for faith in commitments to actual personal and collective progress.